Dance For You
by T3h Toby-Chan
Summary: All that Alfons and Noa wanted was something real to hold on to. They looked for it in Edward, but found it in each other. ..Movie spoilers..


Author's Note: This was the first movieverse fic I ever wrote waaaaaay back when. And yes, this gets a lot of crap wrong, and is a little shaky, as most firsts tend to be.

Also, there's no need to correct me telling Alfons' disease isn't Tuberculosis, because I didn't know it at the time. Oh sure, I know _now_... I feel so silly for the way some parts of this story turned out, but I like writing these two enough that it's not an issue.

And after so much research on the Roma (Gypsies)... well, let's just say my first ideas for those incorporations of the culture were really, really stupid.

The end has pacing issues.

**Dance for You**

Her presence was almost ethereal; a floating, liquid tendency of motion that should have been unnerving, but he somehow found comforting. Perhaps he had been without a woman in his life for too long, all memories of his mother bleeding into an uncertain tapestry of faint sentimentality from his childhood, and he craved that existence more than he could have supposed in those years of that absence. She brought to him a heightened sense of awareness, a small spark of sensitivity he could recognize when she entered the room; a power she had over the few people who ever bothered to know her for who she was and not what she was. This was probably the reason he could sense her, even as her footsteps were so deliberately quiet while she gentle shut the door to Edward's bedroom behind her. He wouldn't have been able to hear it otherwise; he only felt her eagerly, unexpectedly, causing his nib to grate and snap against the meticulously sketched diagram, and pools of ink to splatter across the blue graphed page. She heard the ink bottle topple, and jumped a bit in instinctive flight response, looking down the stairs to where he glanced back sheepishly, quickly moving to blot the mess with his rusty spotted handkerchief and hoping she wouldn't notice the bloodstains among the ink within the faint moonlight he had been working by.

"Alfons..." She whispered in surprise and relief, stepping away from the door to avoid waking the other who slept nearby. She moved to the top of the stairway and stared curiously with that innocent gaze that reached for everything; that strained to see, to understand. He wavered under the gaze, smiled weakly and offered up reasoning before it was demanded.

"I- I moved the table under the window here. For the fresh air," he offered, sliding his papers away and stuffing the stained handkerchief in his pocket, as he moved to the base of the stairs, "I was about to get to bed. I didn't know you- weren't asleep..."

He immediately regretted even implying the topic; it was enough to try to dance around the subject of just who Noa and Edward were to eachother in his own mind, but to bring it up in front of her was another matter entirely. The thought of alienating either of them with akward relationship complications was a horrible thing to him. Before he could attempt to correct his folly, she spoke, reassuringly.

"It's not what you think," she said, not quite smiling, not quite upset, as she descended the stairs at a liesured pace, stopping a few steps above him as she took her time to gather the hem of her nightgown and sit down gracefully. She took her time in choosing words, as she often did, measuring carefully for tact. In that way, she wasn't much unlike Alfons in his younger days; there had been a time when he had been far too shy and polite for his own good. Those tendencies remained, but he had grown strength anew, built confidence that only solidified with what time he knew was dwindling.

"I'm..." she finally spoke at her chosen moment, "Worried for him. It makes me feel better if I can just watch him sleep. So I know he's alright." Alfons laughed at this, wondering inwardly which would have been more hurtful; if they had been making love, or if they really were just reaching a spiritual connection with eachother that he could touch in neither of them. He brushed that off, supposing himself to be selfish either way. If Noa could heal Edward, that should be satisfying for him... right?

"I guess that makes two of us," He said, casually seating himself on a stair beneath her, "Though I can't say I haven't noticed him growing under your influence. He used to be so distant with other people that I was afraid maybe there was something truly horrible behind it all, aside from just plain eccentricity. But you've changed him a lot. He really likes you."

"He likes you as well," Noa said.

"It seems that way," Alfons replied, scratching his right shoulder, "But I don't think it's entirely true. I always feel like... like he's looking through me. Like every time he smiles and tells me he's glad to have me as a friend, it feels as though he's speaking to someone else not there. Somebody he misses... from that 'other world' of his."

He tried again to chuckle nervously to illustrate that maybe it was just a stupid thought of his, but she kept a straight face. There probably weren't many people who could understand fully how it felt to be seen as a hollow surrogate.

"A replacement..." She said plainly, almost as though there was something deeper that she understood within that heartbreaking word.

"I'm not accusing him of anything," Alfons defended, still smiling lightly to try to keep a dark shadow from falling on their conversation, "It's just that I-"

"You love him."

A brief, unglamorous pause hiccuped between the lines; one that allowed the metaphorical arrow to sail and smoothly peg it's target.

The weak smile on his face spread wider, defeatedly, almost wiring itself into the corners of a frown; the kind of smile one wears when they know their unbidden tears are inevitable but still perservere out of years of learned pride. It was sheepish and vulnerable.

"I suppose you could say it that way," He said, resting his chin on his fists, his elbows on his knees and staring forward at nothing at all, "Edward is... strange. He's smart, and different, and he's just amusing to be around. But there's something more that he always seems to be hiding. Something I wish I could reach. Because... Edward is by far the best friend I've had... in a long time. And it just really hurts to see him act so distant when I wish I could pull him back down to earth. Make him enjoy this world here and now, lest he disappears and completely forgets."

"Then why won't you touch him?"

"What-... do you mean?"

"I've seen him when he tries to hug you; when he rests his arm over your shoulder, or leans against you. You always tense up and move away. If you really wanted to reach for him, wouldn't you try to use those advances?"

"That's-... not it-"

"Then you're afraid?"

"I-"

"You're afraid of what might happen if he truly did love you back, and suddenly was gone. If he loved you as your own person, and then left with nothing but the memory of that love and loss. You only learned to protect yourself against that hurt."

"You..." He began, looking back up at her, straight into that solemn face, "You're really good at that..."

"It's not soothesaying; it's only a common sense of emotions. I'm just telling you what I see," For once, her somber expression broke into a weak smile, and she pulled a strand of hair behind her ear, looking at him again, "Is it that you're afraid to touch me as well? Are you afraid of what I might see?"

"There's more to it than that..."

"You want to reach for other people, but you've closed a part of yourself."

"I don't want to hurt you when I'm gone!" He said this more loudly than he would have wished. He flinched, and coughed, drawing out the ink stained rag from his breast pocket to wipe his mouth.

"Consumption," She stated again, in her habit of drawing attention with one word and a pause for continuation.

"Hm?"

"The White plague... or the doctors call it... Tu-... tu- something. I've seen people ill with it before. And I've seen them get better."

"It rarely turns out that way," Alfons scoffed, choking back a tear and wiped a line of saliva that dripped unattractively from the corner of his mouth, "That's why... that's why I need to leave something behind. Something that has meaning. And I don't want that something to just be an illness I left for somebody else to suffer through."

"I'm not afraid of being infected."

"But there's still-"

"If we've already risked living in the same house, why not go all the way with that sacrifice and live normally? You really should hug him. He needs it more than you know."

"And what if-"

"And you need it more than you'll allow yourself to believe," She interrupted, sliding smoothly over to a step behind him, making a fluid motion to slip her arms around his neck. He tensed, his broad shoulders rising in defense, and slowly deflated, the falling motion punctuated by small sobs. He lifted a hand to his face, utterly humiliated and positively liberated by having been touched so deeply; by having his core reached into and flayed open for the world to see, all with the act of a single embrace.

"God..." He muttered, half choking on the words, "God, I just-"

"Ssshh..."

She sighed, and crooned to him, pressing against his back, re-enforcing her grip, trying to hold his entire being together with a pair of weak arms. It was curious how such a strong man could break and rebuild himself in the arms of someone so much more delicate. He calmed, breathed deeply, slowly tamed his overwhelmed mind, and came to coherence once again.

"What do you do?" He finally asked, when he was once again able to assemble words, "You wanderers who have nothing but your selves to travel with. How do you remember people? How do you leave your memory with nothing? No great works, no photographs, no journals or mementos?"

"We are a very resillient people. We live on in our words, and in our actions. If a performertells a magnificent story that lights up the face of one child, so that child will always remember it, she has left her mark on the world. And if we want to keep something dear in our history, wetell it again throughsong and artand share it."

"And what would you do. If we were separated, and never saw eachother again?"

She exhaled deeply, strengthening her grip and whispered into his ear,

"I would dance for you," She said, "And I would remember."


End file.
